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Eghpewong
Sales and marketing are key. Unless you or a co-founder is well known in your industry, your launch will be a quiet one. The opposite of “build it and they will come”. The next step is to get your startup’s name out to your audience. Read the great To Sell is Human by Dan Pink. Look into customer experience and why it matters too. The Sense of Style by Steven Pinkeris another book I recommend highly. It isn’t much to do with sales or marketing directly but it will help you write better content for sales and marketing. Depending on your startup and its industry, different techniques for sales and marketing will and won’t work for you: *Partnerships with companies whose customers would benefit from your startup. For example, if you’re a e-commerce site for new parents, give discounts to bloggers who write about parenting. *Internet advertising such as Google Adwords, Facebook ads and Twitter ads. It’s relatively cheap and easy to see what’s working and what isn’t. *Old-media advertising such as newspapers and radio. This will only work if you want to focus on a particular town or city to begin with. It’s also great for brand awareness but may not convert into customers. *PR campaigns. I’ve seen many startups make the mistake of using PR campaigns to promote the founders rather than the business itself. Watch that ego! *Recommendations are the best form of advertising. If people love what you’re doing, they will tell other people. Focus heavily on customer experience and it will improve the likelihood of them promoting you. You have to make every customer buy in to what you do and be your biggest fan. Startups are like ducks My mum works as a counsellor and she always says is that no matter how calm and relaxed a person might seem on the outside, underneath there’s a likelihood that they’re a panicked mess. The duck may seem like it’s sailing smoothly across the water but underneath its little feet are thrashing away wildly, trying to go in a particular direction. You may think that you’re the only business in the world where everything is uncontrolled and falling apart. Welcome to startup life. These feelings are completely normal. Every other startup founder feels like this too. How you deal with it to the outside world is what matters. The best companies make it look completely stress-free when they’re not. Try reading Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton for proof that the most successful startups can still be full of in-fighting and dysfunction. A great podcast on starting a new business is Startup by Alex Blumberg — it’s something that I look forward to each week and it’s recommended listening for anyone wanting to start a business. “Launching a startup is like taking the brakes off your car when setting off on a long journey” The future. The launch is just the start. Keep going. Keep iterating. Try out features. Change the design. Talk to your customers. Enjoy the journey. Any founder will tell you, startups aren’t meant to be fun. It’s hard, stressful work and you’ll hit a lot of obstacles along the way. One day you might want to pack it all in, the next you’ll totally love it. You might become rich and famous or you might crawl out of the rubble of a failed startup. Don’t be scared of failure. It’s better to try and fail than never try at all. Many successful founders have had companies shut down before getting the formula right. Don’t think it as failure, it’s just a way that didn’t work. This is your opportunity to make a dent in the world. It could be in a tiny way or it could be in a huge way, but with a startup, you have a potential to change the way that people live their lives.